Extraordinary Phenomenon 91 



The carters have a story about horses which had spent 

 the night in a meadow being found the next morning in a 

 state of exhaustion, as if they had been ridden furiously 

 during the hours of darkness. They were totally unfit for 

 work next day. Instances are even given where men have 

 hidden in a tree with a gun, and when the horses began 

 to gallop fired at something indistinct sitting on their 

 haunches, which something at once disappeared, and the 

 excitement ceased. But these things are said to have 

 happened a long time ago. 



So, also, there is a memory of a man digging stone in 

 a quarry and distinctly hearing the strokes of a pick be- 

 neath him. When he wheeled his barrow the subterranean 

 quarryman wheeled his, and shortly after he had shot the 

 stones out there came a rumbling from below as if the other 

 barrow had been emptied. The very quarry is pointed out 

 where this extraordinary phenomenon took place. It is 

 curious how a story of this kind, something like which is, 

 I think, told of the Hartz Mountains, should have got 

 localised in a limestone quarry so far apart in distance and 

 character. How well I remember the ancient labourer 

 who told me this legend as a boy ! It is easy to philo- 

 sophise on it now, and speculate upon the genesis of 

 the tale, which may have originated in a cavernous hollow 

 resounding to the tools ; but then it was a reality, and I 

 recollect always giving a wide berth to that quarry at night. 

 As the old man told it, it was indeed hardly a legend ; for 

 he could disclose every detail, and what has here occupied 

 a few sentences took him the best part of an hour to 

 relate. 



Now and then the western clouds after the sunset 

 assume a shape resembling that of a vast extended wing, 

 as of a gigantic bird in full flight — the extreme tip nearly 



